Municipal services remain undelivered

Residents and opposition parties have called out the municipality for “losing sight of priorities” when it comes to maintaining the Mbombela and White River area.

Thea Rix, well-known resident and community activist, said a number of recent water and power outages had “garnered a fierce conversation” among people, especially on social media.

“Issues are not being fixed. Things are looking bad. People just feel these power and water outages are very frequent and residents are frustrated,” said Rix.

The DA Ward 17 councillor, Sanley van der Merwe, said CMLM should be doing more for its highest rates collection areas.

“It is not an ideal situation. The municipality should be making more money available in their budget for maintenance and upgrades.

“It was stipulated by National Treasury last year, when it was in talks with the municipality over its major financial issues, that it would need to have at least eight per cent of the budget available for upgrades and maintenance.

“The municipality only made four per cent available in the budget, and while this is better than nothing, it is not nearly enough to deal with all the infrastructure issues,” said Van der Merwe.

Locals on the Mbombela Water, Electricity, Roads and Any Service Delivery Information Facebook page said issues such as water running down roads, burst pipes, masses of potholes and a lack of service delivery were some of the biggest problems throughout Mbombela and White River especially.

ALSO READ: Difficult road to recovery lies ahead for teen

The CMLM had not responded to media queries at the time of going to press.  

Silulumanzi’s Richmond Jele said it recently installed an upgraded telephone and communication system in its call centre.

He said the centre is operated by staff on a 24/7 basis so the public may report any water and sewage-related service disruptions.

“We will shortly expand our communications channels on social media platforms to enable us to reach affected customers directly at any given time.

A self-service portal is available on our website, www.silulumanzi.com, for customers to update their contact numbers,” said Jele.

ALSO READ: Siblings mourn mysterious death of children in fire

The call centre may be reached on 013-752-6839.

Jele explained Silulumanzi has four fully manned water plumbing teams during normal working hours, while two teams are on standby 24/7, specifically to continuously address water leaks, pipe bursts and sewage blockages.

“From time to time, due to various reasons, bursts occur in the water distribution and reticulation system. Due to the recent heavy rain and above-average wet season, we encountered higher-than-average bursts, and this may be attributed to higher-than-usual groundwater table and saturated soil,” said Jele.

“Other common causes may include external interference, such as third-party damage to our infrastructure, corrosion of steel or galvanised fittings used during the initial installation.

“We do have an annual pipe replacement programme and constantly replace or upgrade ageing infrastructure while we monitor the status and failure rates.”

ALSO READ: Celebrating Earth Day 2021

He said Silulumanzi relies on information from the field via various forms of communication.

“Unfortunately, lately, people rely on hearsay and social media chatter, which tend to turn into negative comments and lead to uncertainty. We encourage individuals to contact the call centre for updates.

“A Silulumanzi WhatsApp group for Mbombela councillors and key stakeholders is used for conveying information. We will soon expand our communications channels through other social media platforms to enhance direct communication with customer at any given time of day or night.

“To achieve this we will obviously depend on updated customer information, such as the contact details of the residents in an area affected by service disruption. More information on this will be announced through your publication, as one of our existing channels of public communication.”